VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney accused each other of falling short on patriotism as they both campaigned in Virginia Thursday.

Romney isn’t just wrong about his tax plan, Obama said, he’s going against fundamental American values.

“During campaign season, you always hear a lot about patriotism. Well, you know what, it’s time for a new economic patriotism — an economic patriotism rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong and thriving middle class,” Obama told a crowd of 7,000 here at the Farm Bureau Live Ampitheater.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) took the attack on Romney even further as the senator introduced Obama. By skipping military service during the Vietnam draft, Webb said, the Republican nominee hadn’t “stepped forward” when so many men of his generation did. The double-barreled, star-spangled assault on Romney came on the candidates’ second consecutive day of dueling swing-state events — Wednesday they were both in Ohio, and Thursday, Romney was just outside the Beltway at an American Legion hall in Springfield, Va.

Obama’s remarks were a particularly aggressive rebuttal after years of having his own patriotism — and even his citizenship — questioned. It flipped the post-9/11 campaign script that for years had Republicans calling Democrats unpatriotic. And they bolstered the campaign’s response to Romney’s argument that the defense cuts looming under sequestration show a failure of presidential commitment to a strong military.

Obama didn’t go as far as Webb in raising Romney’s lack of military service — the president also has no military record. But Obama mocked the Republican position that favors stopping defense cuts while also cutting taxes for the wealthy.

“Every few days he keeps on saying he’s going to ‘reboot’ this campaign and they’re going to start explaining very specifically how this plan is going to work — and then they don’t,” Obama said. “They don’t say how you’d pay for $5 trillion tax cut[s] that are skewed towards the wealthy without raising taxes on middle-class families. They don’t explain how you’d spend $2 trillion more on military spending that our military hasn’t asked for without having you foot the bill. The math doesn’t add up.”

Romney tried to keep attention focused on the potential defense cuts, arguing that the $1 trillion being discussed is both a threat to national security and to the heavily defense-dependent Virginia economy.

“It is still a troubled and dangerous world, and the idea of cutting our military commitment by a trillion dollars over this decade is unthinkable and devastating. And when I become president of the United States, we will stop it,” Romney said to the crowd of about 200 who packed into the small hall to see him. “This is a crisis and in this kind of circumstance, given the challenges and threats around the world, given the need for employment here and given the need for our veterans, how in the world as commander in chief you can stand by as we shrink our military commitment financially is something I don’t understand and I will reverse it.”

The discussion isn’t just about security and jobs, Romney warned. He said veterans’ health care would be particularly hard hit, especially as more troops return from Afghanistan and add to the rolls. He raised the specter of more suicides among service members, a problem that the armed forces has been struggling with.

The Obama campaign says that not only are both these claims false but also that Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan voted for sequestration himself.

It was Webb, a veteran himself, who offered the strongest words of the day as he discussed veterans’ benefits. He recalled his own father’s time as a World War II pilot and the time his brother and his son spent in the Marines without explicitly mentioning that none of Romney’s immediate family, including his five sons, were in the military. Webb talked about his own time in the Marines — noting that he’s almost exactly the same age as Romney — without explicitly mentioning that Romney was performing his Mormon mission in France while Webb was deployed.

“People made choices about how to deal with the draft, and about military service. I have never envied or resented any of the choices that were made as long as they were done within the law,” Webb said. “But those among us who stepped forward to face the harsh unknowns and the lifelong changes that can come from combat did so with the belief that their service would be honored, and that our leaders would, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, care for those who had borne the battle, and for their widows and their children.”

Webb hit the theme repeatedly, wondering aloud how someone who was the “generational peer” of so many veterans could have failed to thank them for their service in his speech last month to the Republican convention. He also referenced Romney’s private fundraiser remarks about 47 percent of Americans relying on government assistance, noting some of these were veterans.

“In receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers,” Webb said. “They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: ‘All gave some, some gave all.’ This is not a culture of dependency.”

Webb’s office declined to comment on whether the senator was questioning Romney’s patriotism for not having served. Obama didn’t discuss the remarks directly but did praise Webb for his “eloquently stated” comments on veterans’ benefits.

Romney was introduced by former George W. Bush Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, the national chairman of Veterans for Romney.

“I urge you to double down the next five-plus weeks because we need you out there in the trenches. This is a big state and you know how to battle, so I know you’re going to be there,” Nicholson said. “This man knows our world. He knows us vets.”

Romney returned briefly in his remarks to national security and defense issues that he’s largely avoided since he drew criticism for his initial comments about the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Libya and Egypt. He also talked about what four more years of Obama would mean for the economy — and mocked Obama’s reelection slogan.

“Well, he calls it ‘Forward.’ I call it forewarned. It’s the same series of policies that he’s put in place over the last four years, and they have not worked,” Romney said. “And if you don’t believe [me], why, look at the price of gasoline and look at the jobs in your community and the members of your family that are struggling for good work.”